Terrorism’s innocents go unheeded

Press, 27 November 1980, Page 21

Terrorism’s innocents go unheeded

PAUL WILKINSON,

professor of inter-

national relations at Aberdeen University, looks at the failure of democracy to meet the challenge of terrorism.

Many of us who participated in-the recent Council of. Europe conference on terrorism at Strasbourg did so with a heavy heart. My gloom about such events stems from two main sources. First, I confess to a prejudice against the arcane technical debates of legal experts and national definitions of legal codes and procedures. The group which tends to get overlooked in these legalistic high-wire performances is the growing legion of innocent victims of terrorist crimes. Let us never forget that every victim of terrorism in , a democracy — including policemen, soldiers, and lawyers undertaking the dangerous task of protecting us —- is innocent. Let us not fall in

to the trap of terrorist propaganda, with its idea that attacks on the judiciary. and security forces are somehow morally permissible. Second, the conference met against a background of failure. The Council of Europe’s pathbreaking Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism, designed to facilitate extradition and prosecution of terrorists, is in .deep trouble. The essence of the 1977 convention was to define the most serious terrorist crimes such as kidnapping, bombing, and hijacking as common crimes. The intention was to prevent terrorists evading extradition on . the grounds that they had committed . "political offences.”

This hopeful atmosphere is almost gone. When it came to ratification of the convention, many States wanted to enter reservations under Article 13 . enabling them to refuse extradition on the grounds that a particular offence was indeed politically motivated. Let us be under no illusions about the failure of political and judicial cooperation when seen in

the context of the scale of the threat. In 1979, more than half of all international terrorist incidents occurred in N.A.T.O. Europe; double the 1978 total. Because the freedom of the liberal democracies lays them wide open to terrorist attack, it is vital to understand the obstacles democracies must overcome if they are effectively to uphold the law and protect the innocent, „

Many naive liberals assume terrorism is just an irritant: best ignore it, they say, and it will go away. Some are obsessed with the danger of overreaction. Of course, it is true that a State resorting to panic measures by suspending basic civil liberties plays into the hands of the terrorists by helping them destroy democracy. Public and politicians alike must understand that protracted terrorism destroys the vital supporting pillars upon which any viable democracy is built. Terrorists systematically subvert popular morale by intimidating the people into believing that governments can no longer protect them and that terrorism is bound to succeed,

They attack the values and institutions of law by killing and intimidating judges, magistrates, juries, and police. They even try to set up a private gun law, arrogantly deciding who shall be “executed.” Terrorism also attacks the free press by trying to use it as a. propaganda weapon, and any journalist who dares to speak out against terrorism becomes a target. • Terrorists sometimes deliberately, sometimes as puppets of hostile States, constantly weaken defence by diverting scarce security resources. , Last but not least, they weaken democracy’s capacity for economic survival by destroying valuable plant and costly technologies, by scaring away

investment, and by intimidating workers. Much of the complacency on the part of politicians and officials stems from a failure to recognise such actions as a long-term danger. In the name of all the innocent victims let us mobilise democracy to beat terrorism. Improved security can never be enough. The real battle is the trial of wills between the democratic society and the petty tyrants who attempt to bomb the majority into submission.

Let us explode the myth that terrorists in a democracy are freedom fighters. The terrorist's only concern with freedom is to use it to seize power by violence.—Copyright, London Observer Service,